Economics began as a branch of moral philosophy.  Its founders, including Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, focused on social ethics.  Economics gradually became more formal and mathematical.  Physics became the ideal for economists to emulate, a systematic field divorced from moral content.   Ever more abstract and divorced from the culture that guides and […]

  I find economics fun and useful. Fundamentally, it is not about money.  Rather, economics is a mode of thinking focused on two things, information and incentives. Unless deliberately randomized, as in a fair lottery or coin flip, most decisions are based on information and incentives.  It’s no accident that’s the way the world works.  […]

  Gallatin Writers is FREE’s sister organization, created twenty years ago.  We wanted to help people allergic to economic thinking understand the ethical and ecological value of economic reasoning to achieving their goals.   Here is a key: Respecting liberty and the contributions of prosperity is essential to a good society.  Poverty is the worst polluter.  Having come to economics […]

“Krugman’s depiction is not the way real economists would describe any of this.” – John Goodman in today’s FREE Insight Individuals working in the world of ideas lack sanctified immunity to the consequences of inconsistency.  Others monitor what they write and expose errors, especially those linked to ideology.   Here libertarians, aka classical liberals, have a […]

  I welcome several changes in this New Year.  And how fortunate we are to live here!  On many cultural, commercial, and medical dimensions, life in and around Bozeman is ever better.   Yesterday we had over 50 elk on our place.  (Fortunately, our haystacks had been trucked off.  Herds of elk eat and destroy them.  […]